IF I REMEMBER I AM ASLEEP I AM AWAKE

I see these children all around, these old children getting off the RTA bus. These children of the United States. These children who are not children in age anymore but who are children in terms of innocence and ignorance.

These children who have been dulled. These children who have mired themselves in consumption. These children who get off this bus, pull jeans up around and curl their fingers. These children of clumsy grace. Clumsy but synchronized with this wave of sleep.

The wave of sleep is a heavy blanket over the country. The wave of sleep isolates. The wave of sleep thickens the ear. The wave of sleep slows down reaction times. The wave of sleep protects and abuses.

We are in this landscape, a moving landscape where the moving parts are sleeping people whizzing all around, sometimes even around the globe. We people are on some kind of autopilot consumption, an obsolete command to be fruitful, consume and multiply. We people have turned this blanket into an unhealthy place to be.

We can pull up this blanket and install the magic carpet. The magic carpet actually is installed. It is preinstalled. The magic carpet is a loam. The magic carpet is a strata. The magic carpet is a substrate.

The magic carpet is a substrate through which our fungi self permeates. Our fungi self has many mushroom heads when it flowers. Our mushroom heads are heads of annointedness. Our mushroom heads are not atomic bombs. We declaim that metaphor.

Our mushroom heads are heads of annointedness. Our baptism is innate. We do not need explicit baptism. Our mushroom heads are awakening.

Our poetry is awakening even if the poets are asleep. The poets are asleep by virtue of not remembering. The poets are asleep by virtue of the history of abuse. The poets are asleep but the words wake. The words walk. The words are Word.

The poets do not remember that their words are Word but they do remember. Word has permeated through by virtue of observation and multiple pathways. Word is water. Word is water that trickles up. Word works mouths and wonders. Word is innately awake even from our sleeping mouths.

We are in that dream in which even clasping a grain of sand is something that cannot be held on to. I can hold on to a ring. A ring is mostly permanent. But my cells go away. My cells float up and around and down and are eaten by other creatures of the substrate. My cells might not even exist other than in some kind of beautiful dream detail.

When we ascribe science to something maybe we nail it down. We take part of the dream and put it under the microscope and we find that the dream can follow predictive behavior. But the fabric of the dream unravels and the studies no longer make sense after a while, after the mass of people stops believing those particular studies.

We create cells by virtue of belief. We create maggots in isolated jars.

We can hold on to Poe’s grain of sand but I much rather the ring, or a penny. I can tape a penny to my hand and know that I am in the land of dream but that the penny is heavier than paper.

Pennies are heavier than paper, and more substantial. When I see a penny or a nickle or a dime on the ground I am pleased and I pick it up. When I create thread I am happy. When I am industrious and efficient and economical with thread I am happy. When I am economical with food and turn something into a big meal I am happy. When I do not have to waste food, I am happier yet.

It is a Grimm fairy tale that is not grim, that of being the industrious wife. That of holding onto my penny. That of remembering that I am asleep. If I remember I am asleep I am awake.

Lady

Sunny days – foto by Smith

I’m going to start re-posting a few of my favorite poems I’ve written over the past 48 years. They’ve been seen before but not by my new readers, and I feel an urge to reestablish my bona fides.

But first, an update on my hip replacement and a recommendation to those of you possibly in the same pain.

Well, the doctor said no driving for eight weeks after surgery. Tomorrow makes three weeks since they cut me open and chopped and channeled my chassis, and yesterday I drove 60 miles back from Lady’s parents because it was best that way since I was awake and she wasn’t — and our last ride home with her driving asleep at the wheel was the scariest ride of my life (and I’m the guy who actually rolled his own car upside down in his own driveway – of course I was going way over 60 mph at the time, which ain’t easy to do in a driveway). Last night I figured I’d rather incur some extra leg pain driving so we wouldn’t become part of that old 1970′s comedy group Firesign Theatre’s famous quote “And there’s hamburger all over the highway in Sector Seven.”

I think maybe the doctor knew what he was talking about on not driving because today I hurt in new places. No damage done, but a wee bit of caution learned.

As for the hip replacement – anyone out there in serious hip pain, go for the operation. It’s changed my life; in fact it’s given me my life back. The years of horrendous debilitating bone grinding against bone pain was gone as soon as I woke up. And the bad torn-flesh pain only lasts about two weeks after the operation and there are a lot of pain pills to help you make it through the night.

Two days after the operation I was home. Two days later we went to a party. Two weeks later I’m walking without crutches or cane. It’s like magic, the proverbial before and after. If the doctor wanted, I’d make a free commercial for them praising them to the skies.

I’m poor and had to wait 6 years so Medicare would pay for the operation, but if you hurt and you’re covered, go for it. It’s literally a miracle.

Anyway, for the next few days I’m blogging some Smith classics, poems that always work when I read them to audiences, poems I’m still proud of 5 decades down the road, poems from each of those five decades – starting with this.

Dear Occupants, Accidents & Occidentals

Just yesterday it was yesterday
Now it’s already today

Confuse not mercy with weakness
Confuse weakness not with an upset liver
And confuse not an upset liver with love
It is the shape of the silence
Which defines the sound
Like winter rubbing against summer
Each refines the other

Only certain curtains can be drawn
The rest must be endured
The souring sermons
The centered self serving
The lion den Christians in Coliseum stands
Twixt ape and angel wandering
Torn between the knowledge
And the need

Do I worship the moon or sun
Or yet the blooded one?
I bloat and smell
Decay in age
The focus runs

— Smith, 2003

Lady K, her Grandmother Lenore, her parents’ dog Miles – foto by Smith

me & Bat Boy – foto by Lady K

email from my music collaborator

Dear Smith:

Nice photo. Now I see where Bat Boy gets his good looks.

You should know, however, that the story about this incredible picture and the alleged photoshopitudedness by the shooter is an obvious deception by the Government as part of the Bat Family Coverup. It was actually radared by Lady Bat while her husband Bat Smith was chasing Bat Boy after catching him eating his secret personal collection of classic Playbat Magazines. It is rumored that Bat Boy was pooping sex for days. Bat Smith, wife Lady Bat and their son Bat Boy are protected at a top secret government installation hundreds of feet below the City of Cleveland, Ohio. Bat Smith reportedly was able to make a phone call from his prison during which he supposedly said, “Bat out of help me!” or something equally meaningless before he was disconnected. At least so goes the latest viral online chatter. Just wanted you to know.

- Peter Ball, aka Apartment One

You can hear Peter’s music at reverbnation.com/apartmentone

In his 194 songs online, he’s included 14 of our music word voice collaborations – their titles end in “smith“.

Bat Boy & me in alternate reality – foto by Lady K

Tremont Crawl by Steve Goldberg – foto by Smith

Poetry reading tonight at 7pm
featuring Steve Goldberg and Lady K
at Mac’s Backs on Coventry.

Goldberg says “So are you all tired of me reading my poems about Tremont? If not, or haven’t caught me yet, or are just afraid to cross the river, I will be reading at Mac’s Backs on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights. Mac’s is carrying Tremont Crawl, so you can buy a copy and if you wish to lower the value, I’ll sign it. Also, it will be my honor to share the stage with Lady Kathy Smith.”

I believe the painting on the front of Steve’s book is by Tim Herron.

As for Lady, it’s like John Burroughs said, “We never know what you’re going to read. And we like it that way.”

Mac’s Backs Books
1820 Coventry Rd
Cleveland Hts, OH
(216) 321-2665

Here’s an older Lady poem to give you a taste.

IT’S WONK

I know you are shocked, that now I really have gone
past
some boundary of common decency.

But I prefer to think of the self actualization of the
oompa loompas, and how I might have some
responsibility
to help them self actualize.

It was all ethical, you see.

So I admit it. I had sex with the oompa loompas.
Yes. All of them.

Their pricks are hot and red and normal sized, and they
are an enthusiastic
lot.

And little man shoulders with a strange competency
of distorted shortened arms, underarm stink,
dark arm hair.
They smell like garlic and chocolate.

I cradle my head on the little man belly of an oompa loompa
and he tells me his little man dreams
how he’s going to start his own business
get out from under the man who is so falsely
benevolent, start his own chocolate factory cooperative
which will be part owned by the oompa loompa
proletariet brothers

- Lady K Smith

Lady in last foto from my dying camera – foto by Smith

The Hopi Elders Speak
We Are the Ones We’ve Been Waiting For

You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour.
Now you must go back and tell the people that this is The Hour.
And there are things to be considered:
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your Truth.
Create your community. Be good to each other. And do not look outside yourself for the leader.
This could be a good time!
There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart, and they will suffer greatly.
Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water. See who is in there with you and celebrate.
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally. Least of all, ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from your attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

—The Elders Oraibi,
Arizona Hopi Nation

from the 19th Peoples’ Art Show at CSU – foto by Smith

Here are some shots of art hanging at two of last night’s openings at CSU’s the 19th Peoples’ Art Show (in which Lady and I each have a piece) and the Wall Eye Gallery’s Skulls & Revolution show inspired by the peoples’ protests going on in Mexico.

This will be a final pleasant respite before I blog my collected political headlines from the past ten months over the next three days in anticipatory fear of this Tuesday’s election when the fundamentalist flat-earth Christians and the Tea Party anti-democracy thugs win three to five congressional seats (plus who knows how many seats lost to the Corporate house slaves known as Republicans) and begin to destroy even more of what little democracy we have left in this country. But now that I think on it, this is a good thing — our system is beyond broken, little more than a three-card Monte pyramid scheme crap shoot orchestrated by the corporations to fleece the world’s sheep, and the sooner the rich are seen as obviously in control of everything and destroy even more of our world and lives with their greed and thoughtless selfishness, the sooner moral, decent, intelligent folk will rise up against them and try to take back our planet and governmental systems — or what little’s left of them.

The foto of Christ with my face was taken by poet photographer ceramicist friend Jim Lang.

For potential prudes and censors, that is an actual plant root over the man’s groin, not genitalia (of course the question is moot considering the phallic two-guys-on-either-side-of-a-mirror bronze sculpture.

(Some folk are wondering if I’m trying to get kicked off MySpace by showing edgy art fotos – no I’m not, I’m just trying to remain true to my artistic ideals; but if I were to be banished from MySpace, it certainly wouldn’t be much of a loss for me — but in case they do deep-six me, come on over to Lady K’s and my main blog at WalkingThinIce.com which has 2,034 posts from June of 2006 posted in 10 countries on three continents, with around 5,000 fotos as well).

I apologize for not getting the artists’ names of these pieces — it is not right to post an artist’s work without crediting them, but my brain was slower than my ethical compass last night because the night went so fast with so much art and so many artists. . . you couldn’t spit without splattering some serious talent.

shots from 19th Peoples’ Art Show at CSU – fotos by Smith (except for the one Jim Lang)

shots from Skulls & Revolution at Wall Eye gallery – fotos by Smith

The City Record - foto by Smith

While unsuccessfully looking through the June 9 issue of The City Record Official Publication of the Council of the City of Cleveland for something to cut out for use in a collage, I discovered what I’d construe to be a bit of flim-flam two-step soft-shoe skullduggery: every single item discussed or approved by council was handled either as an “emergency ordinance” or an “emergency resolution.’

I believe (but do not know) this is because there are different rules involved when voting on emergency measures, since by definition “emergency” implies a lack of deliberating time. I suspect emergency rules allow for faster voting, fewer words, and less transparency — but that could be just the inner political cynic that life has turned me into talking.

There seem to be a lot of emergencies — we’re talking 37 large pages with three columns per page of small print in this report of at least 150 emergency measures. Since this is a weekly report, it means we’re talking 21 emergencies every day of every week. I knew city life was fraught with peril, but really.

But City Council only meets once a week, except during the summer when they meet but once a month. That means during their once a week sessions they have to process 150 items; and during their once a month meetings they have to get through 600 to 750 items. I don’t see time for a lot of discussion or analysis or depth involved here; perhaps that is where the ‘emergencies’ arise.

Curious, I checked these emergencies out – most deal with buying stuff and paying people off and giving the rich and corporations more of our tax money, while the remainder deal with such mundane emergencies as issuing a “permit to the Lion of Judah Church to stretch a banner on Lexington Avenue between East 70th & East 66th Street for the period from June 18, 2010 to July 18, 2010, inclusive, publicizing “Focus on the Family” and other kiss the babies and support our troops politicizing.

The financial emergency ordinances have some odd language in them, like the first one they took up — “An emergency ordinance authorizing the purchase by one or more requirement contracts of Microsoft licenses for the various divisions of City government, for a period up to three years, with three one-year options to renew, the first and third of which are exercised through additional legislative authority.” Hmmmm, they have to vote later on the 1st and 3rd renewal, but not the 2nd? Why would they stipulate skipping the second year?

Do people really talk and think in words like these? If they do, maybe that’s what’s wrong with the system, we’re letting the dunderhead obsessives run our city with their thick fingers, obfuscating wordings, and hive mind.

low rates no loitering – foto by Smith